Recipe: Cinnamon Pecan Pudding

Here’s my confession: I get so antsy at the thought of food waste.

I don’t like the idea of throwing perfectly good food away just because the fam got tired of it. This attitude is probably a holdover from my younger years when my family was not living as comfortably as we are now and I didn’t get to enjoy a lot of good food.

Still, getting my fam to finish of every last bite of leftover bread can be quite a challenge.

After all, while freshly baked bread does get us salivating at the mere aroma of it wafting from the oven, stale leftover bread is, at best, ignored and placed at the back of the refrigerator.

The solution? Re-invention!

With just a few additional ingredients, a little bit of prep work and some time in the oven, the leftover bread that my kiddos turn their nose up at becomes a mouthwatering dessert.

I got the idea for this recipe from fellow blogger Tina of Hungry Travel Duo who made a Creamy Bread Pudding from stale bread. I just made a few substitutions – such as using leftovers from my homemade bread and using pecans instead of raisins (because I’m not big on raisins!) – and adjustments for my family’s taste – like doing away with the sweet milk sauce – and my Cinnamon Pecan Pudding came to be.

Here’s how I did it:

Ingredients:

• 6 to 8 1-inch slices of bread cut into 1-inch cubes (you can use 8 to 10 pieces of regular sliced bread)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder
• 2 tablespoons room temperature butter
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 cup roughly chopped pecans (you can substitute this with chopped walnuts)
• 3/4 cup condensed milk

Procedure:

• Grease a baking pan with butter.
• Spread the cutup bread and 3/4 cup of pecans evenly in the pan.
• In a bowl, whisk together the beaten eggs, cinnamon powder and condensed milk, then pour over the bread.
• Top with the remaining pecans.
• Bake in a 200 deg C oven for twenty minutes until golden brown.

This recipe is great when you want a quick and fuss-free dessert or if you want something fresh from the oven for your coffee break.

How about you? How would you re-invent your leftover bread?

Check out my other dessert recipes: